How to piss off Harold Bloom this summer

L ife at Yale can be hard. In the 12 short weeks of one
semester, the average English major might be forced to read 12 of Shakespeare's histories and tragedies, Paradise Lost, The Dunciad, and The Prelude, as well as chapters 3-7, 9, 12, 13, and 15-20 of Thomas T. Arny's classic Explorations: An Introduction to Astronomy. Right now, in dark, overheated dorm rooms, there are students who haven't left their desks in weeks, the glorious New Haven spring foresaken for an endless, solitary study of subjects such as the comparison of Odysseus and the sexy photographer guy in Bridges of Madison County. There are still others who have to read books in other languages! Where the words the author uses aren't even in English!

This torture, however, is about to end. Over the summer, students can escape from the destructive, mind-constricting canon of great literature and, of our own free wills, read absolute crap instead. During the dog days, we get the chance to read books not ordinarily found on Yale syllabi, be they trash classics like Judy Blume's Forever, or intentional camp such as Terry Sothern's Candy. "I read a book called Aztec," confesses Shana Katz, PC '00. "It's about an Aztec guy who has sex with a variety of things, from whores to family members to random animals of the rainforest." Jeremy Taylor, SM '00, describes Samurai Surf Robots: "A guy from the planet Ttoom lands in Malibu, makes friends with some gnarly surfer dudes, and thwarts the plot of the evil bikers who are in league with the Samurai Surf Robot Corporation. The big bad guy at the end of the book is a talking lobster."

Proud of it or not, at least once in our between-semester lives, most of us have enjoyed a book that actually makes us dumber. Behind their intricately-painted covers, trashy novels give us the fast-paced plots, tawdry sex, and oceans of blood that the great books of the Western canon constantly deny us. Classics are just no fun--try finding one place in Wuthering Heights where a character smashes somebody's head against a wall or takes off somebody's bra. In Jackie Collins's Hollywood Wives, however, scenes with these elements are available on nearly every page. And that's why it's an incredibly popular book.

Unlike "literature,"which more often than not is rooted in realism, garbage novels transcend genre. They're about guys on pirate ships, guys on spaceships, guys with time machines, guys who can read people's minds, guys who discover the dreaded secrets of cursed ancient cities. Literature toys with the meanings and implications of words, but trash either stays away from ambiguity, or, in the case of sci-fi and fantasy, simply invents bizarre new words where the author finds current English ones to be insufficient. This produces sentences which are absolutely impossible to understand out of context: "They attempted to frolic in null gee, but in their docking suits, they no longer had use of their membranes." Wha? (From Genellan: In the shadow of the moon, by Scott Geir.)

Trash succeeds in areas where literature dares not even tread: although there haven't been too many widely acclaimed, well-written novels about bloodthirsty forest animals, there have been a million books like Grizzly!. With an incredibly frank tone, this novel warns women about the dangers of camping in bear-infested woods. As one of his nubile characters gets her chest cavity ripped open, author Will Collins writes: "What had been desirable breasts, cradled in lace moments before, became hunks of raw, bleeding meat." Better not show that to anyone on the YSEC.

In contrast to their high enjoyment value, trashy books cost next to nothing. While the trade-paperback edition of a recent Pulitzer Prize-winning book might set the consumer back $12-15, a good garbage novel only costs $6 (maximum) off the wire rack down at the bus station. Really trashy novels cost even less: at Nu Haven Book and Video, I was able to buy both Yuppie Hooker and Young Willing Flesh for the low, low price of $5.29.

Both contain language as creative as can be found anywhere, as well as an almost revolutionary use of the `caps lock'. I challenge anyone to find another place in Western literature where the male organ is referred to as a "big saucy dick bat" (p. 102 of Flesh) or any literary character so dramatically overcome by emotion that she yells, "AAAAAARRRRGHHHH! AAAAAAHHHH! UUUHHHHHHGGGHHH! LICK ME!" (Lauren, p. 69 of Hooker). Jane Eyre, for all her literary worth, never got so worked up over mere Rochester.

If reading garbage novels can be enjoyable, editing them can be pure hell. During the summer of 1996, Jeff Bayson, BK '97, worked as an intern at Avalon Books, a firm which exclusively publishes trash novels. "Old ladies from Texas would always call up and ask when the next installment of Jennifer Grey, Veterinarian Detective was coming out," he recalled. "There was a whole series--`The Parrot Caper,' `The Goldfish Caper.' They published the worst books. Like Does Cupid Do Take-Out? and The Equestro-Cat, which had a picture on the cover of a cat riding a horse."

However, even The Equestro-Cat was no match for the manuscripts Avalon turned down. "There was one where a kid's father dies, and at the end, the kid sees him again, on top of his house, alongside Santa Claus and the baby Jesus. There was another where a crazed male gynecologist ties up an Indian boy and performs nasty sex acts on him. We had to turn those two down."

The absolute weirdest of the trash novel genres, however, is the religious trash novel. According to Brian Stewart, author of five religious paperbacks, these novels are written to "change the mindset of people who have a low view of God's Ten Commandments." In Fatal Love, Stewart's latest, he presents the reader with two types of characters: people who have embraced Jesus and people who are possessed by demons. The book starts as demons take control of a popular virtual-reality game, changing the ending so its players can only win by pledging allegiance to Satan. Players get possessed left and right by "spirit guides," demons who influence them to rip the heads off dogs. Meanwhile, Chad, the founder of the game empire, gets so corrupted that he becomes a homosexual. His lover goes to Africa and gets so possessed he winds up tearing the head off Chad's wife (Chad having reconverted to heterosexuality on an angel's recommendation) while on trial for fraud. In the end, the bad people all die or go insane, and the good people reconfigure the virtual reality games into reconstructions of Bible stories rather than gateways to Hell. Fatal Love also contains about three grammatical errors per sentence.

"The worst human consequences occur after death," Stewart explained in an interview. " In modern society, very few people are punished by, say, being flayed, or skinned alive." He also mentioned his novel's pedigree: it passed through four editors, including the "great-granddaughter of Daniel Webster." Stewart actually wavered over his book's merit at first--on one hand, he admitted his works were essentially nothing but pulp; on the other, he compared his badly edited run-on sentences to Joyce's stream-of-consciousness style in Book 18 of Ulysses.

Theeternal struggle between good and evil aside, trash novels appeal to all of us because they allow us to escape the mundane for a world of spaceships, adventure, and cheap, enjoyable sex. "Alas, my life has so shaped me that I now read only superior books," said Yale College Dean Richard Broadhead, BR '68, GRD '72. Don't be like him this summer.

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